The sale and/or distribution of digital content, such as music, videos, documents, etc., over a network, such as the Internet, is a growing industry. Typically a user visits a website from which digital content of a desired type is known or believed to be available for download, locates a digital content item of interest—e.g., a particular song, album, video, document, etc.—selects the content for download, and satisfies the requirements, if any, required to be met to download the content, e.g., by completing a purchase transaction, providing a promotional or other code, providing requested information, etc.
A variety of mechanisms have been used to provided downloadable digital content without requiring the recipient to complete a purchase transaction. In some cases, special promotional campaigns have been undertaken pursuant to which codes and/or other data that a consumer and/or other targeted person or group can redeem to obtain free or discounted digital content have been distributed, e.g., on physical articles, electronically, etc. Some services enable a user to purchase a physical and/or electronic “gift certificate”, card, code, etc. that can be given as a gift to another who can then use the gift to purchase digital content from the service. However, such gifts are essentially gifts of money and do not enable a user to give a gift of specific digital content selected by the user. Finally, special codes have been provided, e.g., in connection with the purchase of a physical article to which digital content associated with the special code is related—e.g., a player or other device configured to render the digital content—to enable a holder of the special code to download a set of related digital content items, such as all of the albums and songs of a particular band. However, such sets of content have in the past been predetermined by a vendor and/or other source of downloadable digital content, not items arbitrarily selected by a user, and in the past such codes have been bundled with other purchased goods and/or services and provided to and for the benefit of a purchaser of such goods and/or services, not made available to be given as a gift by one user to another. Therefore, there is a need for a way to enable a user to purchase and give to another user as a gift an arbitrarily selected set of one or more digital content items selected by the giving user.